The Facebook Conundrum: Personal Profile vs. Personal Brand Page

What happens when you have been using your name for your Facebook personal profile vanity URL, launch a personal brand website years later, and now need a Facebook brand page with the same URL?

I have been using Facebook for more than 10 years and it’s been quite a ride. Over the years, I’ve gone from loving Facebook to hating Facebook, to feeling pretty neutral about it. And over time, I’ve changed the way I use the platform.

Originally, I joined because my college friends were using it and it was a way to communicate, share photos, and stay in touch. It was only for fun. Then, after attending an online business conference, where I learned all about how I should be using Facebook for business, to build my network, sell my services, and grow my business.

Slowly, my time on Facebook shifted to primarily business use because the majority of the people I was connecting with were other business owners I met at conferences and events. The unfortunate side effect was that while Facebook was a fantastic platform for my business, focusing on my business pretty much alienated many of my friends from high school and college.

Eventually, I felt Facebook fatigue.

I didn’t want to spend my days hawking services on Facebook. I was tired of the spam and pushy sales messages that were taking over my feed, and Facebook was ceasing to be fun. So I took a break and regrouped. I came back to Facebook with an intention to put joy first, to make my time on the platform about investing in real relationships, and to share what’s going on in my business periodically instead of every day — and this approach felt much better.

My personal brand is who I am — all of who I am personally and professionally.

I already had a personal profile where my personal brand had been living.

Did I really need a Facebook page? Organic reach for pages is basically nonexistent so I wasn’t sure I wanted to invest time and effort in building up a Facebook page.

If I did create a page for my personal brand, what would the URL be? I was already using /jenniferbourn for my personal profile.

See what I mean about a conundrum?

How I manage Facebook Today

I have my personal profile that is slowly becoming more and more personal and less and less about business. My personal profile is all about personal relationships, staying in touch with family and friends, and finding out about events and concerts by bands and venues I like.

I am trying to put the joy back into connecting with friends, family, and colleagues on the platform, so every time I log in, I trim my friends a little bit based on what is showing up in my news feed and what I do and don’t want to see in terms of content:

Sometimes that means unfriending people

Sometimes that means muting someone for 30 days to see how it affects my news feed

Sometimes that means unfollowing someone so they don’t clog my newsfeed, but I can check in on them periodically.

In terms of Facebook pages, I have three tied to my own businesses and websites and one that I manage for the Sacramento WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Sacramento.

Bourn Creative Facebook Page

The Bourn Creative Page is my oldest page and to be honest, I don’t manage it well. I’ve gone in spurts of posting often, I’ve gone months without posting anything, and I’ve posted sporadically. None of my actions on the platform have seemed to affect my business and very few people ever see anything I do there, so it continues to exist because it’s expected and I need a professional presence for the brand on the platform, but it isn’t a primary destination.

Inspired Imperfection Facebook Page

The Inspired Imperfection Page is the page for my personal blog. My fun side project where I blog about recipes, family adventures and places we visit, and my efforts in trying to live a healthier life. This is the hub of content and information for Inspired Imperfection on the platform. I’m not investing in paid ads or boosting posts for this brand yet because right now I want to keep it my fun, no pressure site.

Jennifer Bourn Facebook Page

With the launch of jenniferbourn.com and the creation of Profitable Project Plan, my business and client management training course for web designers and developers, I wanted to try my hand at Facebook ads. And, if you want to run Facebook ads, you have to have a Facebook page to tie the ads to, which meant I needed a Facebook page for this brand.

But what to call it and what URL to use? Almost all of my social profiles are /jenniferbourn…

The only profile I have that is different is Instagram because I joined the platform very late only to monitor my daughter’s activity, but then I really liked it, and now I use it to share personal photos.

So this left me with a dilemma.

My personal Facebook profile = facebook.com/jenniferbourn, but if I have to have a page for that brand, shouldn’t the page have that URL?

I decided that changing my personal profile URL to free up /jenniferbourn for my personal brand page was the smart move and researched how to make the switch. I was paranoid that if I changed my personal profile URL, somehow I’d lose the ability to have my own name on the platform. I was afraid /jenniferbourn would disappear into a vanity URL abyss, not be available for my page, and someone else would snag it.

The Personal And Professional Blend

I am who I am. I am a mom, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a blogger, a business owner, a speaker, a consultant, a teacher, a concert-goer, an adventurer, a cook, a lover of books, a player of board games, a collector of Legos, and many other things.

My personal life and professional life aren’t separated, they’re blended together.

This means my personal profile and my business page will have both personal and professional content, but shared in a way that respects my network and audience. I don’t want to spam those who connect with me personally with too much business content, and I want to make sure those who connect with me professionally find value in what I share. So…

My personal profile will be mostly personal photos, thoughts, and content, with a little business sprinkled in.

My professional page will be mostly professional articles, tools, resources, recommendations, and videos, with glimpses of my personal life mixed in.

It sounds simple, but getting to this point was anything but and I’m happy to now have a foundation to support all of my efforts moving forward in a way that makes sense and respects those I am connected with.

Some links used on this site are “affiliate links.” If you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

About Jennifer Bourn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Bourn is founding partner at Bourn Creative, a full service design and development company specializing in WordPress. With twenty years in the industry under her belt, she is an award-winning designer who consults on branding, website strategy, and content strategy. Jennifer speaks often, delivering workshops and keynote presentations, blogs about food and travel at Inspired Imperfection, co-organizes the Sacramento WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Sacramento, and writes often for other websites on freelancing, client services, blogging, marketing, websites, and branding.

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